Intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) refers to any form of bleeding within the skull. It can result from trauma, vascular abnormalities, hypertension, or other medical conditions. ICH is broadly categorized into several subtypes based on the location of the bleed: intracerebral hemorrhage (including intraparenchymal and intraventricular hemorrhages), subarachnoid hemorrhage, epidural hemorrhage, and subdural hematoma. Each subtype has distinct causes, clinical features, and treatment approaches.
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain (i.e. the parenchyma), into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stroke (ischemic stroke being the other). Symptoms can vary dramatically depending on the severity (how much blood), acuity (over what timeframe), and location (anatomically) but can include headache, one-sided weakness, numbness, tingling, or paralysis, speech problems, vision or hearing problems, memory loss, attention problems, coordination problems, balance problems, dizziness or lightheadedness or vertigo, nausea/vomiting, seizures, decreased level of consciousness or total loss of consciousness, neck stiffness, and fever.
Hemorrhagic stroke may occur on the background of alterations to the blood vessels in the brain, such as cerebral arteriolosclerosis, cerebral amyloid angiopathy, cerebral arteriovenous malformation, brain trauma, brain tumors and an intracranial aneurysm, which can cause intraparenchymal or subarachnoid hemorrhage.